It’s no secret that Lil Wayne is a huge Jay-Z fan. The ‘Lollipop’ rapper has often given Hov his flowers, crediting him as one of his biggest inspirations. A lot of thought goes into getting a tattoo, so the fact that he has Jay’s lyrics inked in his body is no small feat.
Wayne once revealed that his favourite Jay-Z verse was the opener on ‘Lucky Me’, a track from his 1997 album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1. The project initially stood out because he could relate to what he was saying in his raps.
“It was the first album where I actually had the car that the rapper was talking about,” he told Rolling Stone. “And also, Jay talked so crazy on there. He went bananas on that album. I got lyrics from that album tattooed on me and shit so that album stuck with me for real.”
Wayne has the words “Lucky Me” tattooed on his neck, just below his left ear. Not only that, but he also has lyrics from the first verse on his left leg. Wayne collaborated with Jay on ‘Mr Carter’ from Tha Carter III in 2008. At the song’s end, he paid tribute to ‘Lucky Me’ by rapping the original lyrics.
He raps, “And I swear to everything, when I leave this Earth/ It’s gonna be on both feet, never knees in the dirt/ And you can try me, fucker, but when I squeeze, it hurt/ Fine, we’ll lose two lives; yours and mine/ Give me any amount of time, don’t let Ms Carter grieve/ At the funeral parlour, drippin’ tears down my sleeve/ Give me any amount of time, don’t let Ms Carter grieve.”
Wayne isn’t the only one with a deep connection to ‘Lucky Me’. LeBron James’ agent and Adele’s fiancé, Rich Paul, also named his memoir after the song, which he once described as his favourite.
Jay is also the reason why Wayne changed up his whole recording process. While Biggie Smalls and The LOX’s Jadakiss were big inspirations to him, Hov had the most significant impact. So much so that he even stopped writing down his lyrics because of him.
“Like Biggie, love Biggie, love Jadakiss — I love all that shit, but Jay,” he told The Pivot Podcast. “The moment I heard it, I stopped. You could ask my boy. ‘I heard that n*gga Jay-Z don’t write no more.’ We went in the studio and we did ‘10,000 Bars’ and that was the last time I rapped anything off of a paper.”
Wayne previously revealed that Birdman had to speak with him because he sounded too much like Jay-Z. “When you find a favourite artist, you’re going to start sounding like them,” he said. “It took Birdman and them to pull my ass aside and be like, ‘Bro, I’m tired of every song you doing sounding like damn Jay-Z. You’re not Jay-Z.’”
Jay and Wayne have collaborated on a few other songs, including T.I.’s ‘Swagga Like Us’ alongside Kanye West in 2008 and DJ Khaled’s ‘God Did’ in 2022, featuring Rick Ross, John Legend and Fridayy.
